In a speech yesterday before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Mitt Romney, ever the prevaricator, told a whopper.

He said:

A healthy American economy is what underwrites American power. When growth is missing, government revenue falls, social spending rises, and many in Washington look to cut defense spending as an easy out. That includes our current president.

Today, we are just months away from an arbitrary, across-the-board budget reduction that would saddle the military with a trillion dollars in cuts, severely shrink our force structure, and impair our ability to meet and deter threats. Don’t bother trying to find a serious military rationale behind any of this, unless that rationale is wishful thinking. Strategy is not driving President Obama’s massive defense cuts. In fact, his own Secretary of Defense warned that these reductions would be “devastating.” And he is right.

[W]e could note the irony of the Republican presidential hopeful condemning spending cuts, arguing that it would hurt the economy if Washington spent fewer tax dollars, but let’s put that aside and focus on a more glaring problem: Romney thinks the automatic defense cuts are “President Obama’s massive defense cuts.” They’re not.